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Film, Media, and Performing Arts

The department offers a Film and Media major and minor, a Dance minor, and courses in a range of disciplines from Yoga and Meditation, to music, Health education, and certain sports—courses other than those in film and media fulfill a Health and Physical Education requirement for departments across the college.

Film and Media is a four-year program in the School of Liberal Arts that leads to a Bachelor of Science degree. During all four years, students make films as well as studying film and media history and theory.

Semester 4
• FI 222 History of Film 1960 to Present
• FI 2XX Documentary Film Production

Students in good standing receive an AAS degree after two years, and are admitted into years three and four of the program for the Bachelor Degree.
By year three, students select courses reflecting their interests and career goals. Along with advanced work in cinematography, editing, and screenwriting , they choose a “specialization” that might include work in directing and art direction; or (through the Illustration department) drawing as it relates character development and storyboarding.

One course in Film Theory, is required, as well as one each from groups of courses dedicated to National Cinemas, Film Genres, and Major Directors.

We currently offer courses in French, Italian, Russian, Latin American, and Chinese film. Genre courses include Crime Films, Melodrama, Science Fiction, Horror, and a History of Animation. Courses on Alfred Hitchcock, Akira Kurosawa, Charlie Chaplin and Frank Capra, Federico Fellini, are offered under the Major Directors heading, with many more to come.

A student’s major course requirements for years three and four will look like this:

In the 21st century, Film and Media has become a foundational discipline, where skills and knowledge related to the moving image can be applied across the widest range of employment in the arts, entertainment, and business worlds, from documentary and feature filmmaking, broadcast or cable television, industrial films and advertising, to moving image content in media from the internet to the IPhone.

Students in the minor are introduced to the language of film criticism and history; they learn to apply their critical skills to a range of narrative, documentary, and experimental film, television and other media from a hundred years of history, around the globe.

Many of our courses are cross listed with other Liberal Arts departments such as History of Art, Modern Languages and Cultures, and English and Communications Studies. For a full list, see the undergraduate catalog under Film and Media.

• Required: FI 111 – Introduction to Film (or FI 371 Film Art-Honors)
• Four additional courses (12 credits) from the Film and Media studies list.

New York City is one of the major dance capitals of the world. The Dance minor immerses students in New York's dance scene as practitioners, writers, and viewers. Our objective is to guide and encourage students to engage with dance as movement, as social projection, as an art form. Students take courses in a range of dance forms, as well as courses in dance history and social context.

Required for the Dance minor:

• Nine (9) credits in performance courses such as Modern Dance, Jazz Dance, Ballet, Afro-Caribbean Dance, Flamenco Dance, Dance of Middle East and India, or Choreography.

• Six (6) credits--two courses--in dance history, theory, and appreciation, selected from Dance in New York, History of Ballet and Modern Dance, Urban Dance: Theory and Practice, and Modern Dance: Theory and Practice.

We seek to introduce students to some of New York’s most adventurous movers, and to foster thoughtful consideration of students’ role as engaged social actors.

The minor requires a level of discipline and organization that will serve you in your professional lives, and seeks to provide you with a platform on which to hone your skills as performers, public speakers, writers, and members of the community.

Additional Courses Offered by the Department

The Film, Media, and Performing Arts department also offers a range of courses aimed at promoting students’ general health and well-being. These include:

Along with the courses in dance, these fulfill the Health and Physical Education requirement for departments across the college. They may also be taken simply for pleasure, to stay fit, to balance a student’s work load with physical activity, or to relieve the stress of other obligations.